


First Semester

by Zordosia (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zordosia
Summary: The first night of orientation, Angelica’s standing in a soccer field as neon spotlights swirl around her and a boy in a muscle tank asks her where she’s from.Angelica's first semester at college.





	

The first night of orientation, Angelica’s standing in a soccer field as neon spotlights swirl around her and a boy in a muscle tank asks her where she’s from.

“New York City!” she says.

“Cool, I’m from Georgia.”

“Atlanta?”

“No.”

“Is it hot down there?”

“During the summer, yeah.”

And then Angelica cannot for the life of her think of anything to say. Someone else walks up to the boy and he turns towards them, leaving Angelica clutching a Solo cup filled with Sprite, very much alone. She leaves at 10:30 and sits in her dorm room, scrolling through Facebook. She goes to bed early.

The first day of classes, she sits in the second row of the lecture hall. She looks through the syllabus and stares at the dates for the four tests that determine her grade. She suddenly feels very light-headed and exposed, even though nobody so much as looks at her the whole class.

The first Friday night, she hears people walk down her hall, heading to parties she hasn’t been invited to. She calls Eliza and sobs into the phone.

“I hate it here,” she says.

“It’s only first week.” Eliza sounds almost scared. Angelica feels like a monster for scaring her little sister. “Are you sure it’s that bad?”

“I hate it here,” she repeats. She probably sounds like a toddler. “It’s like I’ve forgotten how to talk to people. It’s like that time when Tench asked you to Prom and you just opened and closed your mouth for a minute. Except it’s all the time.”

Eliza, gracefully, does not question her choice of example. She’s quiet for a minute and then she says, “you know, Ang, you could always come home.”

But she can’t, and that’s the thing. It’s not just how her parents were so proud of their daughter for getting to an Ivy, how they told all their friends, how Angelica once had a complete stranger come up to her and congratulate her. It’s not just how she had picked this school out in 8th grade and had tailored every class, every extracurricular, every essay, towards getting in. It’s how her guidance counselor looked at her 4.0 GPA and class presidency and told her that Yale might be too challenging for her. It’s how when she participated in science fairs, reviewers had always asked her twice as many questions as they had everyone else. It’s how a kid in her class brought up _The Bell Curve_ , then glanced over at her. She can’t leave college without proving every one of them right, and Eliza doesn’t get that.

That’s not fair. Eliza has her own struggles, her own assholes. But right now she’s just making Angelica feel terribly alone.

“I think I’m just homesick,” Angelica says.

“I think it’s more than that.”

Angelica loves her sister more than anything in this life but she doesn’t want to be analyzed right now. She doesn’t know what she wants, other than to turn back the clock to the start of this summer and keep it there permanently. “I’ll call you on Monday, ok? I should get started on homework. I love you.”

Eliza doesn’t get off the phone easy, but eventually she hangs up. Angelica sits back and remembers all the times in high school she faked her way through her fear and how well that had worked then, and wonders why her acting skills have suddenly just vanished.

She falls asleep at 10 and gets woken up by the people in her hall stumbling back to their rooms.

The first week, one of her orientation leaders would find her in the dining hall and sit down with her and walk through the same stilted conversation, what’s your major again, how are your classes going, how do you like that professor? After that, though, they float away to their real friend groups, and Angelica eats her meals alone. She finds a two-top further from the boulevards of people, but she still catches someone looking at her and she wants to scream.

“Maybe you could try working out sometime,” Eliza suggests. “It might make you feel better, and it’d be a chance to meet people.” So Angelica starts wearing a sports bra and headband when she skypes with Eliza, so that her little sister can feel like she’s taking care of herself.

The first exam, Angelica makes flashcards like she always does. She can’t seem to remember anything on them. She reads through her notes three times but she keeps getting things wrong. She breaks down into big, heaving sobs.

Her roommate looks over. “Do you want me to leave?”

Angelica doesn’t want her to leave, she doesn’t want her to stay, she wants them to have become best friends and to have each others back and to be a sympathetic ear to come home to. But as is, she’ll settle for her leaving.

Angelica gets an A- on the exam. After class she hides in the bathroom stall until she stops hyperventilating.

She tells Eliza about the exam and bless her, Eliza doesn’t tell her what a good grade it is. She listens quietly, patiently, as Angelica sobs and goes through every single thing she hates about this place. When she hangs up, Angelica feels a bit better.

The first care package she gets has a handwritten note from her parents, a hat Eliza knit, and a mix Peggy made for her. Angelica listens to the mix to remind herself that someone loves her, and wears the hat so other people will know that someone does.

The first party she goes to is a Halloween party that a quiet boy in her seminar tells her about. The party is not quiet. It’s loud and gross and sweaty and Angelica hates it and everyone in it. She sends Peggy pictures of all the assholes she spots. Peggy bets her she can’t find 20 guys dressed as the Joker, and Angelica wins that bet easily. She gets back to her dorm at 2 am and reads back over their conversation before she falls asleep.

The first time she goes home is for Thanksgiving. She tells her parents all about the famous professors, the top-notch facilities, the A she got on her Poli Sci exam. After dinner, Peggy and Eliza let her pick the movie, and they cuddle up. Peggy doesn’t even make fun of it that much.

That night, Angelica determines that these little happinesses will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, and any comments or kudos would make my day!
> 
> I'm theoroark on tumblr, if you want to say hi.


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